“Do you hear yourself? That is what we call making excuses.”
-Wise Pastor to Cheater
Labeling matters appropriately does not only help the cheater, but it also helps their victim, the faithful spouse. Proper labels expose the deeds of the dark to light (see Ephesians 5:11).
It is astounding to me how so-called Christian pastors and professional counselors will entertain all sorts of excuses from cheaters.
It is like a parent asking a child why he hit his sister and then agreeing with the child that the sister “had it coming.” (By the way, most people would understand accepting such an excuse as a parenting failure.)
Likewise, it is a pastoral care failure to listen to all sorts of excuses for cheating and essentially give the cheater a pass for sinning against the faithful party.
A truly wise parent and pastor names the excuse making behavior. They make it clear to the offender that it does not matter what their victim did or did not do to allegedly “provoke it.”
Nothing justifies that behavior.
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*A version of this post ran previously.
